073. Radical Reading and Writing: Imagination in the World

Students come to Oberlin wanting to make the world a better place. They are very generous with their time and work hard to accomplish their goals.

And yet the more pressures students face, the less time they may have for contemplative and creative practices that matter to them, and even for small acts that allow them to feel connected to others. They are always doing a thousand things, and their attention is divided; yet these are the very times when the imagination becomes most crucial – both for students’ development as individuals and for their education as future community leaders. The world needs people who can envision a different reality in order to create change, and this seminar cultivates students’ ability to connect deeply with what drives them in the midst of many and varied responsibilities.

We will focus on reading and writing as radical practices that can dissolve dichotomies organizing our view of the world and make a space for imagining what could be. Authors include Cortázar, Kafka, Blake, Borges, Lispector, Bulgakov, Nietzsche, L’Engle and others.